Arch Linux

falstaff_ch

Member

Registered: 2013-06-09

Posts: 28

Change Gnome lock screen idle timeout

The Gnome lock screen's idle timeout (the time the screen goes back to blank after waking up a locked session) seems to be 30s. Is there a way to change the timeout?

I am aware that there is the lock screen settings for regular Gnome sessions in the "Gnome Setting Screen Lock" dialog, but these are not the timeouts I am looking for. I am looking for the timeout when the screen is already locked, and goes back to blank (turn off the display) due to inactivity.

The reason I'd like to change that timeout is because my screen is VERY slow in starting up and locking to the display signal. I often move my mouse/keyboard, then do something on the side until the screen starts up. Quite often, Linux then just goes back to idle again, and I have to go through the ordeal again. I think something like 2-5 minutes would be more appropriate.

I've started to monitor D-Bus event, and it seems that the "/org/gnome/Mutter/IdleMonitor/Core" D-Bus object is used to monitor activity. I see that something adds a AddIdleWatch with a value of 30000 (presumably ms).

Presumably, the source code of the lock screen is in js/ui/screenShield.js of the gnome-shell repository, but I could not figure out where that time(r) is set exactly.

Any ideas?

Last edited by falstaff_ch (2024-12-10 22:03:31)

falstaff_ch

Member

Registered: 2013-06-09

Posts: 28

Re: Change Gnome lock screen idle timeout

After poking some more, I found the source of the timeout. It seems to be a hardcoded compile time constant in plugins/power/gsd-power-constants.h though.

That gsd-power is involved here I found by looking closer at my D-Bus monitor output where I found the AddIdleWatch matching the timeout. I was able to find the pid of the process calling that D-Bus method by using another D-Bus method "org.freedesktop.DBus.GetConnectionCredentials"  with the sender id as parameter (in my case :1.40). The returned pid I then could correlated with the process /usr/lib/gsd-power.

Rebuilding the ArchLinux gnome-settings-daemon package with a patch which changes the constant confirms that this is the timeout I was looking for Unfortunately, not (yet) a configurable timeout though